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I see absolutely no advantage to an admin playing. If an admin openly plays the game in which they administrate, it can only go one of two ways.

1.) You win - Your status as an admin is called into question

2.) You lose - People will accuse you of "not knowing how to play" or being horrible at the game, and thereby should not be an admin.

I refrained from playing the aforementioned era on F4 for those very reasons, as well as the fact that F4 is my server, and I administrate it. I personally saw it more as a move in public relations, in an attempt to get a better view of the game "from the ground level" than any attempt at competitive play.

I see absolutely no advantage to an admin playing. If an admin openly plays the game in which they administrate, it can only go one of two ways.

1.) You win - Your status as an admin is called into question

2.) You lose - People will accuse you of "not knowing how to play" or being horrible at the game, and thereby should not be an admin.

I refrained from playing the aforementioned era on F4 for those very reasons, as well as the fact that F4 is my server, and I administrate it. I personally saw it more as a move in public relations, in an attempt to get a better view of the game "from the ground level" than any attempt at competitive play.

I wrote a long reply to this yesterday but it seems that one didn't get posted, d'oh.

I see your reasoning Seth, but I don't agree with it. Just as it is no secret that you do not want to play as admin, it is no secret that I played while I was an admin. Perhaps I played too hardcore, that's a whole other question. However, there were many reasons that I played.

First of all, I can not deny that I simply love playing this game. There were many other reasons however. As an admin, you lose touch with how the actual game is played over time. Without saying names, the F4 alliance was good proof that the admins are not so good at their own game anymore. The advantage from playing yourself is that you not only keep up with changes better because you HAVE to deal with them, but that you also have firsthand experience on what these changes do to the game. While I was playing the new spy system got implemented, I gave feedback about that directly because there were quite some initial problems with it that were noticed much better as a player than as an admin. Therefore I think that is one important reason to play, you understand the changes in gameplay that result from updates much better.

Another reason I believe it is good for an admin to play is that this way you can relate to the players much better. As an admin, it's your task to make sure that cheating is caught and dealt with in a fair fashion and on time.

As a player however, you see the impact of the admins. While playing I would get very upset over seeing multies pop up, just spam me and then them getting banned 20 ticks later, when it was already too late anyway. This makes you realise even more how important it is to be active as an admin. Of course admins do their duty, they catch cheaters the best they can. But it provides an extra motivation when you know WHAT you are guarding your players from.

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I see absolutely no advantage to an admin playing. If an admin openly plays the game in which they administrate, it can only go one of two ways.

This is the part where you apparently see no option. An admin can play not only openly but also covertly. Who knows, perhaps we have admins playing right now but we do not know on what world or what their usernames are. This way the negative effects you stated do not exist, and the positive effects that I stated do exist. Then the only issue is that perhaps admins can give themselves an advantage. However I do believe there are (should be) log systems that prevent this or perhaps another admin checking on the admin that is playing from time to time just to check that he or she is not for example giving him/herself resources. Although I do not believe any admin would be stupid enough to do that.

In summary, I think there are many positive effects of admins playing the game, whereas the negative effects can easily be minimized.

_________________Won both Championship Eras as rank 1.. Waiting to make it 3 out of 3.

I see absolutely no advantage to an admin playing. If an admin openly plays the game in which they administrate, it can only go one of two ways.

1.) You win - Your status as an admin is called into question

2.) You lose - People will accuse you of "not knowing how to play" or being horrible at the game, and thereby should not be an admin.

I refrained from playing the aforementioned era on F4 for those very reasons, as well as the fact that F4 is my server, and I administrate it. I personally saw it more as a move in public relations, in an attempt to get a better view of the game "from the ground level" than any attempt at competitive play.

I find it stupid that an admin feels he can't play his own game because of other peoples opinions. I think as an admin you understand cheating better than any other person playing this game so will possibly be the least likely person to cheat. If you won yes, people would make excuses, but that's only because they can't face losing. When it comes down to victory in every era players accuse others of backstabbing, cheating or boosting more than their opponent. What they are actually saying is they can't face losing and so look to blame something else and that is all they would do in the admins case. That is certainly not a good reason to play your on game.

Or is Seth too scared

Ps. I'm not calling you or anyone stupid Seth Just the idea that you can't play

Without saying names, the F4 alliance was good proof that the admins are not so good at their own game anymore.

Thanks for proving my point You were in on the admin chats. You of all people know that we discussed that winning was not an option and that even doing well was potentially dangerous. I have a great understanding of this game. I am a strategy nut myself, so it fits right in with what I appreciate anyway. If you want to play me a game of StarCraft 2 to put me to the test, I am game.

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If you won yes, people would make excuses, but that's only because they can't face losing.

It might be easy for another player to simply dismiss such a thing. Admins cannot.

Few know it, but I started an era on Kong last year as I caved for the first time in my stance, and was doing well. I started the era with the Tacticsoft account as it was easier for me, and the TS account had a balance of 8,000 blue tokens, which I had set in my mind was to be my budget for the era. You guys know as well as I do how fast you can go through that. I used maybe 2,000 of them, and was off & running. Within the first couple hundred ticks, I was in the top 5 rankings.

Through technicality, someone figured out it was me, and all hell broke loose. Corruption was called into question right away because "I had access to an unlimited supply of blue tokens". Never mind that I had already resolved myself to using only what existed on the account to begin with. Whether or not I played by the rules was irrelevant at that point. Players were only concerned that I was playing and that I 'could' have access. Simply the fact that I was getting a good start was enough to convince everyone that I was crooked. I immediately quit knowing I should have simply stuck to my guns.

If & when I do play again, none of you will not know it is me. Perhaps I already have...You will never know.

You can try it hidden, but if so you can't lead for example. As soon as you do and someone asked for you Skype to negotiate, you are doomed. But the biggest problem is your own alliance. Coordinating without skype is a hard task to do. With Skype and trusting your team 100% it can still happen that they mention your name by mistake.

Been there, done that.

Sooner or later its public....and then the trouble start.Like Aister said, E1 some eras ago was horrible. I got accused for using admin power and on top of that, my boss received some messages that he should fire me.I love to play Battledawn, and I am still around. I sit and build

I just can't play like I would like to play. Whatever I do or did would question my integrity.

If i conquer newbies - shouldn't admins help newbies?If I take loads of ops - can it be that she placed them?If I escape right before an lockdown - she must have seen the agent!If I backstab, handover relics, etc etc - She is biased !!!

I could add 100 more situations.Milan said, that it could be solved with mechanics. I don't think so.A good example is when a player has always the same name. This player is in the enemy team where I play and also on servers where I admin. I find out he is cheating and ban him. What do you think will happen?

Yep, not hard to guess.

We admins suck when we play. Thats right, because we HAVE to suck!I agree that we should play and thats also the reason why I still play. I need to stay in contact to the game and to the community to see the balance and the problems.

Well, you might see me around, maybe some of you had conquered me before. I hope you don't know and will never know

Edit: Seems Seth and me posted at the same time. Nice to see we end with the same words as well

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